Test-Ban Treaty Rejection Shows Way for GOP

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 15, 1999 | by Frank J. Jr. Gaffney

When the majority of the U.S. Senate decisively voted Oct. 13 to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or CTBT, it not only made history -- rejecting a major international accord for the first time in nearly 80 years -- it also demonstrated that the Republicans in Congress can prevail when they act in a principled, well-led, concerted and disciplined fashion.

This welcome new approach could serve not only as a basis for the GOP to articulate and adopt more robust national-security policies; it also could provide a useful template for effective governance that will justify electoral success in the next election cycle.

Especially now, as President Clinton and his allies mobilize to mischaracterize and otherwise distort the motivations and conduct that led to their wholesale repudiation, it is imperative that Republicans understand the lessons of this victory -- and apply them comprehensively in the future.

The first lesson concerns the necessity of adhering to principle. In this case, the principle was a fairly straightforward one: A treaty that was not verifiable, not enforceable and not compatible with the maintenance of a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent was not acceptable. U.S. national security cannot be based upon pieces of paper that fail to reduce the threat we face from proliferating weapons of mass destruction. It must, instead, be rooted in the Reagan philosophy of "peace through strength." U.S. power and sovereignty are to be respected and preserved, not subordinated to whatever lowest-common-denominator consensus can be achieved in multilateral forums where the vast majority share neither our values, traditions or interests.

The application of this principle in rejecting the CTBT is not, as Clinton would have us believe, a formula for the United States to abandon its allies, encourage proliferation, "go it alone" and/or retreat to "Fortress America." It is, rather, an alternative vision of U.S. international engagement, one that has the benefit of having been time-tested -- and proven far more successful than the Clinton-Gore approach.

The former rejects the latter's mix of "aggressive multilateralism" a policy characterized by: 1) the steady dissipation of U.S. military power by the combined effects of years of inadequate funding and overcommitment of such resources as it does have via constabulary, humanitarian and other duties around the world of debatable relevance to our security; and 2) the embrace of placebo treaties.

Treaties such as the CTBT actually compound, rather than reduce the dangers we face, both by falsely suggesting something meaningful has been done to ameliorate those dangers and by committing this country to courses of action that render it less capable of dealing with their consequences.

The second especially critical lesson involves the indispensable requirement for leadership. Here the credit clearly goes to the Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi. Early on, Lott made known his opposition to this permanent, zero-yield CTBT. Notably, in what proponents called a "test vote" on the CTBT in September 1998, he took the floor to condemn the treaty and urged his colleagues to reject any endorsement of it. In this event, 43 other senators -- nine more than are necessary to defeat a treaty in the Senate -- joined him in voting against an amendment designed to begin funding for the CTBT's implementation.

Lott not only led by example, but he charged Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona (one of the Senate's most knowledgeable and effective members on national-security matters) and Paul Coverdell of Georgia (a member of the leadership in his capacity as the Republican conference secretary) with educating their colleagues about the treaty's defects. Thanks to these legislators' immense personal investments of time and energy, detailed briefings were arranged for every member of the GOP caucus, collectively and in many cases individually, with leading experts in the field.

First and foremost among these was James Schlesinger, a man who by dint of his service as secretary of energy under President Carter (as well as his former positions as secretary of defense, director of the CIA and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission) has unsurpassed authority on national-security and nuclear-arms-control matters. When Schlesinger spoke, senators listened. And they voted as he recommended after he told them, "In the absence of testing, confidence in the reliability of the stockpile will inevitably, ineluctably decline. In the seven years since our last test, confidence has declined. It is declining today and will continue to decline."

Schlesinger's impact -- and that of the briefings and arguments advanced by others (five former secretaries of defense; the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Vessey and nearly 20 of his fellow retired senior combat commanders; former Democratic and Republican directors of the CIA Jim Woolsey, John Deutch and Bob Gates; respected civilian security-policy practitioners such as former ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith; and credentialed scientists such as John Foster, Robert Barker, Kathleen Bailey and Troy Wade) -- was most evident in the positions taken by senators known for their bipartisan approach to foreign policy and their record of support for arms-control agreements.